three birds (the tiny quilt)

Here's why I love Project Quilting: you learn things. Things about quilting, and things about life.

This week we were asked to make a quilt on the theme "hope springs eternal" which is a phrase I've heard before, but I wasn't sure where or why.

So - of course - I googled it.

I found this:



As a breastfeeding mother of a small infant, I of course honed directly in on the "breast" part. I decided to make a boob quilt. Or a breastfeeding quilt. Or something like that. About a half hour of searching the internet for a boob or bra quilt pattern and about another half hour of searching my mind for some way to sew a breastfeeding quilt quickly (these projects need to be done within the space of a week) with a little baby and my other kids and all the other stuff going on...it all became quite confusing and difficult and so I gave up. Hey! I'm a breastfeeding mother of a small infant - time is of the essence here.

So I began to dig around in my bin of fabric and saw some pretty fabric I've had for quite a while now and done nothing with. It had birds on it. Birds are hopeful. I found one particularly hopeful little guy in one of the repeats seemingly escaping his cage, and the mini-quilt was born! When I was done with the top it struck me that there was a lot of green here. Green is the color of the fourth chakra - the heart chakra - and guess where that's located? That's right - in the human breast!!! So my little quilt had come full circle after all. So now I like to look at these little cages as human hearts and the little birds as the miracles that cause our hearts to open. And that's quite a beautiful thing.

Hope springs eternal, guys.

And here's the quilt:

The life lesson here is if you find yourself struggling and fighting around something that's supposed to be fun, let it go. If it's meant to - it will come back.

See. I learned something about life.

Also - I tried a new technique on this little quilt. Instead of binding it, I looked up some YouTube videos and learned how to put a facing on it instead, so now I have that technique in my bag of tricks. Woohoo!

So I also learned something about quilting.

Good times.

Thanks again Kim and Trisha for an excellent challenge. If you have read this far and don't know what Project Quilting is - please click this link to go to Kim's website. I have been participating for a few years now, and I think it is fantastic.

Thanks for reading, and have a large day!!!

xoxo,
erin

p.s. - I will probably still make a boob quilt someday.